


over breakfast

by sonrisita



Category: Naruto
Genre: Character Study, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person, Pre-Relationship, Tenderness, Uchiha Sasuke-centric, fuck idk how to tag this lol, naruto is busy being the sweetest on the planet as per usual, nobody is white nobody is straight everybody shut up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:46:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26495101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonrisita/pseuds/sonrisita
Summary: Uchiha Sasuke goes home.Hagoromo’s palm on yours. The sting. The edge of the moon on your hand, clean and earnest and you remembered -- for the first time youremembered.The silhouette of your mother against the dying moonlight, the white glaze of light staining Itachi’s hair more grey than black, the way Izumi and Shisui lit up under the stars like they were parts of Heaven sent to earth only to watch the sky.
Relationships: Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 11
Kudos: 53





	over breakfast

**Author's Note:**

> > Here's a safe place to lay your heart down;  
> It's a second chance, it won't be your last.
> 
> ⎯ "Breakfast", Half Alive 

It’s a strange selection, you think, the memories your mind keeps safe: Mother’s emerald earrings, the pattern on the soles of Father’s sandals. The pinch in Aniki’s nose just before the rain started (he always did know the weather better than you did). The waves the fish used to make on the lake. The sound of Shisui’s lullabies on nights he’d watch you and comb your hair; the melody, always, but never the words.

It’s a strange selection, you think, the memories your mind keeps safe: your face reflected on Aniki’s sword, the spit trailing down your chin. The floor under your feet (and you should’ve known this one, but every time you think of the hardwood you think of the corpses, the bodies, the  _ blood) _ . The moment you felt your eyes burn with tears and something  _ else.  _ The way you said  _ stop  _ so many times the word became nothing but a sound in your throat.

It’s a strange selection, you think, the memories your mind keeps safe: the smell of the hospital sheets, the scratchy piece of fabric digging into your knee. The way Aniki -- no,  _ Itachi  _ \-- had looked in those robes, the clouds stained red, red like his eyes but not quite as sharp. The sound -- and you’d long since lost this, you’d thought, to other things, more important things -- of your mother screaming. The uncomfortable tightness of Sakura’s hug and the way Naruto stared at you from the foot of your bed and looked away when you caught his eye, like he’d been caught doing something terrible.

(The empty room, after. Your shut eyes. Tsunade’s voice, clear and sharp, though she’d been sure you were asleep. The sigh in her mouth when she murmured,  _ Damn, kid. It’s like you don’t have a heart at all _ .)

  
  


[ 火光 ]

  
  


“So,” Naruto says.

He’s older now. Seventeen. But you think it’s less to do with his age and more to do with his heart. There’s a fine and disciplined line of focus between his brows while he stares at you from across the  _ chabudai,  _ spreading butter over his bread. He’s trained to focus, now. Nothing like he used to be.

The sunlight from the window casts a shadow over the spread of fruit before you, a harsh light on the ragged skin of what used to be your arm. You keep forgetting it’s not there. Sakura tells you that’s normal: she tells you pain is normal: she tells you the tossing and turning and aching is normal: pins and needles and fire is normal. It doesn’t feel normal. You grab a roll of bread from the center of the table with your right arm and try not to think about it.

There’s a lot of things you’re trying not to think about lately. The way the hardwood is too clean, the way the bed sheets are too fresh, the way the clothes don’t itch and the hugs are never too tight. The way Naruto’s hair is overgrown and shabby. The way it falls to cover his eyebrows while he brushes his teeth. The way you make eye contact in the bathroom mirror and Naruto’s lips quirk, and whether by force of nature or force of habit, yours do, too.

He clears his throat. His voice is so much deeper than you’re used to.

“So,” Naruto says.

“So,” you reply.

His blue eyes are solid. Water you can walk across. They smile when he says, “Tell me everything.”  
  


[ 火光 ]  
  


Orochimaru was never pleasant.

You knew that going into it: he was sickly and pale — paler than Mother, paler than Itachi, skin washed out like a trail of white-hot sand. The purple around his eyes was sharp and so were his teeth. You don’t remember much besides the cages; the way you never had to sleep in one. 

It’s strange the things you hold onto: even after all this time you still aren’t sure just what book it was that Kabuto had given you to read. You still aren’t sure just how much taller you were than Orochimaru in the end. You still aren’t sure of food, of breakfast and dinner, of what they fed you to keep your face round.

You remember the cold, though. A night in late November where the autumn died between your fingertips and chilled straight into the winter, biting at your ears and your toes and your fingertips. Your sword sliced the air but he caught it quickly in the mouth of his summons, red gushing out over white as the steel glided through. Aika was a good summons. You should’ve been sorry. (You weren’t.)

And then he was advancing — a swath of purple and a wreath of dark hair, snake-eyes, and you might’ve been his height then, but you aren’t sure — and he was reaching out a hand, long nails,  _ sharp _ nails, talons more than anything, and the cold — you  _ remember  _ the cold — and you were sick of him being so close and so out your sword came, nothing but a sick squelch left in Aika’s mouth to remember the taste.

He catches your sword with his free hand and it cuts through his palm. His left hand is against your forehead. Your forehead. You feel the phantom of that needlepoint pressure between your eyes, the thump of two fingers pushing you backward — you can hardly keep the growl in and it tumbles out wrong.  _ “Don’t.” _

He’d smiled at you. (You hated —  _ hate _ — his smile.) “Sasuke-kun,” he’d said. “You’re not accustomed to the cold, are you? You’re looking quite ill.”

The blood trickled down the divot of his palm, the hilt of your sword. You scowled. You remember that much. “I’m fine. Let’s get back to training.”

Nevermind the ache in your ribs. You’d learn to get used to it. 

  
[ 火光 ]

  
You’d dream sometimes. Visions here and there, quiet ones: the glossy stain of Mother’s lips on Itachi’s forehead that he’d try to wipe away while the two of you ran errands. Shisui and Izumi passing by to say hello: Izumi always singing, Shisui always smiling. 

Other times, though, the dreams were loud. The sound of Naruto’s body hitting the water like concrete; hitai-ate floating in the muddied water as you sank to your knees together on the lake; the pain shooting up from your wrist and down from your spine; the rocks, his eyes, the moon overhead.

And, naturally, sometimes they were both. The hammering of your heart through the sheets of angry rain and the perfect quiet of the dying sun, melting down the horizon line as your world began to end. Naruto’s eyelashes were wet, with tears or with the sky, you couldn’t be sure. You’d sit and watch him breathe, catch the words on your tongue and swallow them: you’d count the bruises on his face until you had them all memorized; every scratch and every scrape, every blood soaked corner. Again: the familiar ache blooming in your chest, but it’s not pain. It’s not. It’s not.

You know it isn’t.

  
[ 火光 ]

  
Sometime between killing Orochimaru and finding Suigetsu fresh clothes, you remembered your mother’s hair. 

Thick and curly at the ends like yours, impossible to keep down without the right maintenance. She’d comb it for you when you were young; would teach Shisui and Itachi and Izumi to comb it, too, for the nights when they’d take turns watching over you, when the healthy adventure you craved was sought out by walking three quarters of the hall to your brother’s room or half a block to a cousin’s house. And Shisui, Itachi, Izumi: they were good at combing your hair. They never pulled too hard — (well, sometimes Izumi did) — and they never quit halfway, not like your Father had. They were good, sure: but Mom was better. 

She brushed gently, slowly, and her nails ran down along your scalp while she worked the comb through the matted ends of your hair. She sang you lullabies, even when you were getting too old for them. She’d laugh and say,  _ you have my hair, not like your brother,  _ and you’d be jealous of Itachi all over again. 

Anyway. Sometime between killing Orochimaru and finding Suigetsu fresh clothes, you remembered your mother’s hair. And what a strange mercy it was, to have a team again: because sometime between finding Suigetsu fresh clothes and settling down for the night in some inn, a fully formed group of four, Juugo offered to comb your curls out for you. 

You hadn’t let him. But the thought was nice.

  
[ 火光 ]

  
(Kakashi had said, offhandedly once, watching Sakura sew the back pocket of Naruto’s pants back into place: “You never put a puppy down on all four feet, and the poor thing will never learn to walk.”

You don’t think about it often. But when you do, you remember Shisui. Itachi. Izumi. Mom. You remember the combs and the hair oil and the lullabies, spoiled as you were.

When the council put you in your new apartment, dropped off your grocery money, you’d sat in the foyer and realized for the first time in all your eight years, you weren’t quite sure how to comb your hair.)

  
[ 火光 ]

  
Seeing the Naruto bridge had made you laugh; made you laugh in the cruel sort of way that only the Universe and Her cosmic intervention can make somebody laugh. You’d stood face to face with it and laughed, because what else could you do? It was Naruto. It was only right to laugh.

You stalked through the Land of Waves without much pause: Suigetsu rambling through long takes of his straw while you dug up Tazuna’s home address, all the while thinking,  _ his grandson must be as old as I was when we met.  _

You don’t find Tazuna: but you do find the sword. It’s a long walk but you’re willing to make it. 

The temple stretched high: you think if you had been a different person then, you may have felt small just looking up at it. 

You and Suigetsu scope it out from the trees. There’s traps, obviously, and a bite-sized army with horses and blades and sneers a mile wide. You’re gearing up to kill one of them, just to scare the others, when you catch a blond woman in the crowd: long braids down past her hips and broad shoulders pulled back in her battle stance. You think if you had known Tsunade when she was younger, she might have looked like this.

_ (Damn, kid. It’s like you don’t have a heart at all.) _

“Suigetsu,” you had said, and the sound of your own voice — a deep timbre now — had surprised you. You were far from who you were that day, lying miserably in that hospital bed, for certain. But something clung, and still clings, to the underside of your tongue, heavy like sap, when you think of Tsunade’s words. You take a long breath before you say it.

“Don’t kill any of them.”

  
[ 火光 ]

You woke up in a sweat once, in one of Taka’s hideouts, belt fastened tightly over your waist, and you scrambled to untangle it because for a long moment you were sure you couldn’t breathe.

Behind your eyelids Izumi was still dancing: voice still loud in your ears. Shisui would spin her in your living room while Itachi made tea, those warm summer nights with the cicadas and the lightning bugs. She wore blue, but a different shade than your mother did, light against her raven hair, and her cheeks were never pink. She was taller than Shisui until her thirteenth birthday. You’re not sure why you remember that, but you do.

You’d sit on the countertop beside the sink and watch Itachi stir the honey into your tea; he always put honey in your tea -- even when you asked him not to -- because he was sure that tea without sugar would be too bitter for someone so young. You hated being young. You wanted to be bigger; to read his mission reports without having to guess what half the words meant.

“Sasuke,” Izumi’s voice came. Shisui had abandoned her for Father’s armchair. “Come dance with me!”

You had grumbled, sliding off the arm of the couch, careful with your tea in your hand. Itachi took it from you and Izumi hoisted you up so you’d stand on her feet, and she sang Shisui’s lullabies; you remember the melody, always, but never the words. 

“You’re a good dancer,” Izumi would say, and you’d go pink, and then she’d lift you off the ground and heave you into Shisui’s lap, and he’d carry you to bed.

It’s not the first time the three of them have kept you awake: cold nights in the caverns, ducked away from the rest of Taka, and you’d shake on your cot with the sound of Shisui barreling off the docks and into the lake, Izumi in tow: you’d whimper at the hand combing through your hair in the face of a storm, Itachi’s hand, cold but loving, and the lightning through the window is so vivid even in your sleep that you can feel the ghost of it on your fingertips.

[ 火光 ]

  
There wasn’t, isn’t, will never be a word for the way you felt when Itachi collapsed in a heap at your feet. His blood was warm between your eyes, thick and wrong, too-heavy tears curling over the apple of your cheek and slipping off your chin. 

Later you knew. Danzo, the council, the Elders. Your brother’s life was never his, not up to the moment that you took it from him.

  
[ 火光 ]

  
Hagoromo’s palm on yours. The sting. The edge of the moon on your hand, clean and earnest and you _remembered_ \-- for the first time you _remembered._ The silhouette of your mother against the dying moonlight, the white glaze of light staining Itachi’s hair more grey than black, the way Izumi and Shisui lit up under the stars like they were parts of Heaven sent to earth only to watch the sky.  


[ 火光 ]

  
Naruto’s eyelashes were caked with mud the second time you found yourself staring down at them in the Valley of the End. (This is an image you think you’ll have forever: a sort of clarity in the fog of the rest of the things you should know.) Dropping to his knees before you and you had hardly even noticed, because you were dropping with him, the both of you cradling each other’s fists, foreheads pressed close.

You might have killed him, you think, now, although the thought seems wrong.

There was a fleeting moment then, when his hitai-ate crashed against the puddle your shadows had claimed, where you could see everything in the space between your lips and his.

It seemed all too quick, after that: the movement, the blue, his cutting wind and the bite of your lightning against the first four knuckles. Flat on your backs, bleeding.  _ What is a friend to you?  _ You had only asked because you yourself had finally found the answer.

The glow of Sakura’s healing came and went, but the weight of Naruto’s eyes never left. (And you’d never tell him this: but it made the pain worth it.)

  
[ 火光 ]

It was a long walk home. Snow County, half alive; Team 7 made like maggots through the blizzards. And if you ever caught his fingers tracing the line of your jaw at night, his movements secure in the belief that you were fast asleep, it’s nobody’s business but yours.

(And if you curled into the touch, let his warmth replace the heat from the firelight, that’s yours, too.)

  
[ 火光 ]

  
He eats his bread while you tell him everything. Short words, of course, because your throat still stings from all the yelling, but between bites of your peach you sometimes think you catch his eyes looking misty, clogged with tears. You tell him everything; Itachi and Shisui and Izumi and Mother; the singing and the dancing in the foyer on nights when your parents were away. You know Naruto wasn’t there, not back then, but it feels almost like he’s in the room with you, stepping on Izumi’s feet while you claim Shisui’s shoulders. It feels like you could have gone anywhere in the world and seen him and  _ known _ him. It’s a wonder there was ever a time you hadn’t wanted him at all.

He asks questions about them, because of course he does. (Did Izumi or Shisui look more like you? What was your mom’s name? What song was she always singing? Was it the same song as Shisui, as Izumi? Was Itachi’s hair always long?) And you try your best to answer, because you love him, and you’re finally learning to share. 

(You tell him, offhandedly, about your hair, and the way they combed it.  _ Hard to manage,  _ you say. Your curls are hiding your eyes now, overgrown, and you tuck a strand behind your ear while he stares at you, all-adoring. 

“Y’know,” he starts through another bite of bread, “during the war, when I saw my dad? He caught one look at you and started laughing. And I had no idea why, y’know? So I gave him a look and he turned and smiled all big and said,  _ ‘He’s got hair just like your mother. I had to learn to comb it when she was pregnant with you ‘cause sometimes she was too tired to do it herself.’” _

You stare at him, not sure what to do with that. He just smiles.

Gently, then: “If he could learn, I think I can too.”)

You tell him everything; Orochimaru and Kabuto and the way the caves were cold at night, even with the coats they’d given you. He wants to know what they fed you and what you did to pass the time. You aren’t sure how to tell him you don’t remember. Regardless, he seems to understand.

(“What, no questions about them?” you tease, but when you see the look on his face your heart falls. His eyebrows are drawn tight, and you remember your mother in the kitchen telling Itachi something about  _ if you keep doing that, you’ll end up with worry-lines before you’re twenty.  _ The child in you wants to reach out and smooth Naruto over. He shouldn’t have to scowl anymore.

But you don’t. And he breathes: “I hate what they did to you.” And something in you feels a little fuller.)

You tell him everything; but this time, you don’t have to say it out loud. Your lips don’t quite close around the words, not really: “And then we . . .,”  _ fought.  _ He doesn’t need to be told, though, because he knows. “And I . . .,”  _ love you.  _ He doesn’t need to be told this either, not really: his hand finds yours, sticky with the juice of your peach, and his thumb runs over the length of your palm.

“Yeah. I know.” he whispers.  _ I always did. _

**Author's Note:**

> HI this has been sitting in my drafts for months. i might do a continuation but for now here's this super self indulgent sasuke fic because i care about him so much!!!!!! i love comments & hearing what u guys think so!!!!! if u wanna lmk anything im all ears. i love u have a good day :')


End file.
